Can Democrats Play This Game?

E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote in WaPo Russ Feingold tossed a political grenade at President Bush this week, but it fell into the middle of the Senate Democratic Caucus. Many Democratic senators ran away.

They were not stupid enough to take Feingold up on his motion, but with the Loony Left in the Blogosphere cheering him on, they may develop the necessary stupidity.

The grenade was the Wisconsin senator's proposal to censure the president for violating the law by ordering electronic surveillance on Americans without explicit congressional or court authorization.

Even though he didn't need it.

While the episode says more about Bush's political frailty than the first-blush accounts have suggested, it also underscored the frictions and tensions between passionate Democratic activists and their cautious leaders. The president has lost so much support and credibility that Republicans were simply grateful Feingold briefly changed the political subject from the Dubai ports controversy, the mess in Iraq and Bush's anemic poll ratings.

No, they just hoped that the Dems would be stupid enough to vote to censure the President for doing something a majority of the public knows needs to be done. That vote would be very useful in the 2006 and 2008 elections.